Kick in-app reporting to the kerb: How brands can genuinely measure marketing success
In-app attribution is failing marketers, and distorting the true picture of campaign effectiveness, which leads to grossly misallocated budgets. Ash Dharan, head of paid media at NP Digital, argues that switching to holistic measurement isn’t just a trend, but a necessity for making strategic business decisions.
Think back to the last thing you bought online. What drove you to make that purchase? Was it an ad you saw? Maybe a friend’s recommendation, or maybe a review that stuck with you? But if asked to credit them for the purchase in order of importance, could you? I doubt I could accurately.
For marketers, though, assigning credit to purchase drivers is the billion-dollar question. And yet, despite its importance, the methodology many businesses rely on, in-app attribution, is woefully inadequate.
In fact, relying on in-app attribution is like celebrating the summit while forgetting the climb. In-app models, which capture only their own digital interactions, miss the messy, multi-touch path consumers take before a purchase. With today’s consumer journeys spanning multiple devices and locations, accurately assigning credit to any one platform is nearly impossible.
Furthermore, privacy requirements and increased regulations – iOS updates and the phase-out of third-party cookies, for example – weaken in-app attribution even more, meaning we struggle to track users accurately across the journey.
